It’s All About the Pictures
Had a pretty hectic 16 hour today so this will be short.
WIth a whole day and night at my leisure to digest the Tuesday night debate, I’m more and more convinced that the biggest takeaway from the Nashville face-off was all about the visceral visuals.
This was, in the end, like the notorious 1960 debate in which the indelible image was Dick Nixon’s sweaty upper lip, is shifty eyes, and his five o’clock shadow.
Was anyone last night really sitting there and taking notes on whether Obama supposedly voted 93 or 933 times to raise taxes? Or if McCain stumbled when he said his health care plan [sic] would provide $5000 per head in tax credits — or is it really $2500 with $5k as a family cap? Yada yada yada.
Nope. The real message wasn’t the text. It was all in the body language. It wasn’t just young versus old or tall versus short. It was also cool versus hot. Steady versus erratic. Agile versus hobbled. Thoughtful versus impulsive. Warmth versus bitterness. The future versus the past.
CNN tonight projects Obama with 264 electoral votes. The Gallup daily tracking poll has him up 11 points. I guess that lingering question of why isn’t Obama up the double digits he should be has now been answered.
Nap time for John McCain.
P.S. I can’t help but pointing to this unreal load of self-pitying whining from yet one more self-indulgent, overly-entitled MSM dinosaur. Someone buy Dean Reynolds a first-class ticket, please. It can be to anywhere, as long as it is a one-way journey. It’s no wonder that the profession of journalist is eroding before our eyes. Good riddance as the citizenry seizes the means of publication! I love it when I’m asked if we can really trust ordinary people to perform with the same seriousness and gravity as professional reporters. Like Mr. Reynolds, you mean?
P.P.S. As long as we’re buying this guy a ticket. Let’s see if we can get a group rate and pack Gewn Ifill and the now-ridiculous Tom Brokaw onto the same flight! I can only hope that this will be the last presidential cycle in which major debates are turned into senseless sludge by relics of the previous century.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:08 am
This is EXACTLY what my girlfriend and I discussed last night after the debate and what I conveyed to a stranger at lunch today who only heard it on the radio.
October 9th, 2008 at 5:59 am
Shorter Dean Reynolds: “John McCain will make the trains run on time”
October 9th, 2008 at 7:36 am
How about Jon Stewart as moderator? Brokaw was pathetic and I don’t expect much better from Schieffer either.
October 9th, 2008 at 8:32 am
Ever shorter Dean Reynolds: “Where’s my bellhop?”
October 9th, 2008 at 9:09 am
Marc: “It was all in the body language. It wasn’t just young versus old or tall versus short. It was also cool versus hot. Steady versus erratic. Agile versus hobbled. Thoughtful versus impulsive. Warmth versus bitterness. The future versus the past.It was all in the body language. It wasn’t just young versus old or tall versus short. It was also cool versus hot. Steady versus erratic. Agile versus hobbled. Thoughtful versus impulsive. Warmth versus bitterness. The future versus the past.” Gee Marc, should you be talking about Obama in such derogatory terms?
Marc: “It’s no wonder that the profession of journalist is eroding before our eyes.”
Marc, I love you but you gotta know that you are so far in the tank for Obama that it’s almost laughable that you can print that sentence. I’ve yet to see anything from you regarding balance, or even truth. Your comments about reps and mccain/palin are all negative and NO ONE is that bad. Not even Obama.
By the bye, my score of the last debate is that Obama won on points. No fire in the belly shown by McCain.
October 9th, 2008 at 9:34 am
Marc: You’ve been around state news for a few years. Soothe me on this:
You’ll remember when LA Mayor Tom Bradley ran for governor in the 80s; at one point, he was well ahead in the polls–as in not a chance he’s going to lose, well beyond the margin of error, skip Election Day and drive straight to H Street and park in the driveway of the gov’s mansion and get to work. And then Bradley lost. One hypothesis was that we’d seen what’s come to be called The Bradley Effect: some white voters are ashamed to tell pollsters they’re not voting for an Af-Am candidate–either because they’re racists or afraid of appearing racist. And so they lie . . . until they get into the voting booth, and then pull the lever for a white guy.
It’s been more than 20 years. Are we beyond the tug of The Bradley Effect, Marc?
October 9th, 2008 at 9:41 am
GM.. that’s a pretty good joke!
Will, I don’t know. I think so. But we will see. There’s definitely going to be a hidden anti back vote that will emerge. I suspect however that it will be overcome by a larger pro-Obama, anti-Bush vote.
October 9th, 2008 at 10:10 am
” I’ve yet to see anything from you regarding balance, or even truth. ” The voice of reason…
GM Roper: ” There is nothing about Barack Obama that may cause us to think he honors American tradition, or shares with us our time-honored values. Significantly, a man who works to undermine our education system through socialist engineering is a man who seeks to destroy America.
“If the American people elect this man to the presidency, he will certainly destroy the cultural and political fabric of the United States, and when he has finished his work, none of us will recognize what he has left behind…”
October 9th, 2008 at 10:18 am
I have been fed up with this endless campaign for months. It has seemed interminable. I am beyond done. But, there is one positive for Obama in the length of this thing. The more people see him, the more his skin color fades to the background.
Not unlike my experience of a disfigured friend, the more I saw her, the less I saw the remnants of her severe cleft palate. Not unlike my experience with non-native speaking professors, the longer I listened to them, the less I noticed the accent.
That human tendency to see beyond, or hear through that which is unfamiliar at first, but becomes normal over time, has worked in Obama’s favor. The unfamiliar is becoming very familiar.
For McCain, it’s going in the reverse. The assumption of familiarity is being challenged by the weird. The inability to look his opponent in the eye. The lost handshake. The verbal flubs; fellow prisoners?!?! Never mind the intellectual slop bucket McCain’s ignorance of the issues and his endless agin’ it-for it-agin’ it contortion describes.
This country may elect Obama, or not. But, I have to admit, having been a very reluctant Obama supporter from the beginning, McCain does not have – has never had – will never have – Obama’s package of intellect, oratory, and presence. The longer this has gone on, the more powerful (think coiled spring) Obama looks, and the more feeble (think overcooked noodle) McCain looks.
Time has not been John McCain’s “friend.”
October 9th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Oh crap… I see that reg crawled out of his slime pit.
October 9th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Reg is actually being far too kind to our man Roper. I’m posting the full quote from GM’s site, which frankly speaks for itself.
“To say Mr. Obama is not ready for the presidency is a gross understatement. It is not simply that he lacks experience … it is also that he repudiates traditional American values and culture by embracing Marxist ideology, has been an acolyte of black racist theology, cuddled up with the anarchist activism of Saul Alinsky, and even worse … the man is simply and irrevocably dishonest. There is nothing about Barack Obama that may cause us to think he honors American tradition, or shares with us our time-honored values. Significantly, a man who works to undermine our education system through socialist engineering is a man who seeks to destroy America.
If the American people elect this man to the presidency, he will certainly destroy the cultural and political fabric of the United States, and when he has finished his work, none of us will recognize what he has left behind: The People’s Socialist Republic of the United States.”
October 9th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Sadly, you’re correct Ahmed. It does speak for itself. And, what it says, speaks poorly of itself.
October 9th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
“reg crawled out of his slimepit”
Wow – an absolute lack of any sense of irony on top of the rest of it.
October 10th, 2008 at 10:15 am
[...] Marc Cooper: 30 year award winning journalist/ Dude who pays my Am-ex billz Someone buy Dean Reynolds a first-class ticket, please. It can be to anywhere, as long as it is a one-way journey. It’s no wonder that the profession of journalist is eroding before our eyes. Good riddance as the citizenry seizes the means of publication! I love it when I’m asked if we can really trust ordinary people to perform with the same seriousness and gravity as professional reporters. Like Mr. Reynolds, you mean? [...]
October 10th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Sorry I’m late to this party, but re: Dean Reynolds….It’s pretty clear he grew up with a pretty heady sense of entitlement, being Frank’s son and all. And it is a sense of entitlement that seems to waft from the blog entry, along with a weird sense that he is plotting some sort of revenge against the proprietor’s of the funny-smelling plane.
We went to the same tiny liberal arts college, and he was one of the antiwar frat guys who didn’t support Nixon or LBJ, but seemed contemptuous of those who sought to offer more than just a critique, but tried to promote some sort of better society.
I don’t think he’s changed much.